Orchan Consulting | Asia Sdn Bhd

Not long ago, misinformation was something PR teams cleaned up after. Today, it’s something brands must defend against in real time. Across Asia, we’re seeing a structural shift: false narratives are no longer fringe noise. They arrive as CEO statements that never happened, product recalls that were never issued, or political positions a brand never took. Powered by generative AI, these stories now look, sound, and circulate like truth; especially in private channels where verification comes last. For communications leaders, the question is no longer if a deepfake hits your brand. It’s whether your organisation is built to protect reality before fiction becomes belief. When Technology Starts Writing Your Reputation The real danger of deepfakes isn’t technical sophistication. It’s emotional credibility. In Asia’s messaging-app culture, people trust what arrives from friends, family, and community groups faster than what appears in formal media. A manipulated voice note from a “CEO”, a ...

What if the most powerful asset in your PR strategy isn’t what your brand says, but what others say about you? In 2026, earned media isn’t making a comeback. It’s being re-priced. Across Asia, we’re seeing a shift in how people discover, evaluate and decide on brands. As AI reshapes search and recommendation, audiences are no longer persuaded by polish alone. They’re persuaded by proof; what journalists, analysts, creators, customers and independent voices say about a company, not what the company says about itself. Search is no longer a list of links. Platforms like ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini and Perplexity behave more like answer engines. They don’t just rank pages. They synthesise authority. Imperfectly, sometimes unpredictably, but consistently enough to favour brands that appear credible across the web, referenced by others and grounded in real-world validation. That quietly changes the role of PR. For brands across Asia, earned media is no longer just about awareness. It now influe...

Trust isn’t built by what brands say. It’s built by what people experience. Across Asia, consumers interact with brands in multiple ways: news coverage, social media, websites, WhatsApp messages, and customer support. Yet many organisations still operate in silos, with PR, marketing, and customer experience functioning independently. Here’s the challenge: if your press release sounds inspiring but your support replies feel robotic, people notice. If your ad promises one thing and service delivers another, trust quietly erodes…… often before you even realise it. By 2026, silos won’t just slow teams. They can limit credibility and loyalty. But the path to integration isn’t straightforward. Differences in team priorities, tools, budgets, and culture mean seamless collaboration is aspirational, and achieving it requires more than wishful thinking. Why Convergence Matters Consumers Experience Brands as a Whole Audiences don’t separate PR, marketing, or customer service. They experience your...

This article is a deliberate counterpoint to our earlier piece, “Phygital Experiences: How PR Bridges Physical and Digital in 2026.” Together, they reflect a reality most communications leaders face today: phygital is powerful, but only when strategy leads and experience follows. Phygital has become one of the most overused words in communications. Too often, it is treated as a shortcut to relevance rather than the outcome of clear strategy. The uncomfortable truth is this: most phygital campaigns fail. Not because the technology is immature, but because the thinking behind them is. AR filters do not fix weak narratives. Hybrid events do not rescue unclear positioning. Virtual experiences do not compensate for brands that lack meaning or momentum. In many cases, phygital simply amplifies confusion faster and at greater cost. There is also a fatigue that few are willing to admit. Audiences are selective. Not every interaction deserves immersion. Not every campaign warrants participatio...

What if your next PR campaign didn’t just tell a story, but expected people to step inside it? By 2026, the line between physical and digital is no longer blurred. It is functionally irrelevant. Audiences do not experience channels. They experience continuity or they disengage. This is where phygital stops being an innovation play and becomes operational reality. For PR teams in Asia, this shift is uncomfortable because it exposes an old truth. Most communications strategies were never designed to be experienced. They were designed to be distributed. That model is breaking. This piece looks at what phygital really means for PR in 2026, why it matters now, and how to use it without confusing technology with progress. Why Phygital Matters Now Immersion is no longer a differentiator Audiences in Asia have moved faster than most brand strategies. They are already comfortable with: AR-enhanced discovery Hybrid participation without friction Experience-led value, not message-led persuasion T...

What if the conversations shaping your brand never appear on your dashboard? In 2026, the most influential discussions about brands are no longer happening on public platforms. They are unfolding quietly inside WhatsApp groups, Telegram channels, Discord servers, and closed communities you cannot see, scrape, or track in real time. This is dark social. And in Asia, it is not a fringe behaviour. It is the default. For PR leaders, this changes the job fundamentally. Visibility is no longer the main challenge. Relevance is. If your strategy is optimised only for public platforms, you are managing optics, not reality. Many organisations still confuse activity with influence. Why Dark Social Now Dark social has existed for years. What’s changed is its weight. More than 70 percent of online sharing now happens through private channels. Across Asia, platforms like WhatsApp, LINE, WeChat, and Telegram dominate daily communication. Gen Z and Millennials, in particular, prefer private spaces for...

Brand discovery is changing, whether most organisations are ready for it or not. As large language models like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity become default starting points for questions, visibility is no longer about who ranks highest on a search results page. It’s about who shows up inside an answer. Adweek* recently described LLMs as the new information gatekeepers, synthesising content rather than pointing users to links. What matters to these systems isn’t volume or optimisation tricks. It’s whether information looks trustworthy enough to repeat. That distinction is subtle, but it changes everything. Globally, Reddit has emerged as one of the most-cited sources across major AI platforms. Not because it is polished, but because it is messy, opinionated, and visibly human. The conversations there follow real questions, real disagreements, and real consensus-building. That’s how models learn what “helpful” looks like. But Southeast Asia doesn’t have a Reddit equivalent. And that’s ...